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February is my memorial month, four weeks of sifting through archives of dozens of journal entries, hundreds of emails, multiple early book drafts, and other previously unpublished writings so that I can remember, reconnect, literally re-collect, and offer something valuable to you.

It’s a tender and unpredictable process. In spite of my especially heavy professional and private schedule this month, I’ve found myself at my computer in the middle of the night more times than I can count, often listing with longing, tears blurring my vision (or streaming freely) as I return to pieces of writing and living that have shaped me profoundly, and to others I’d somehow forgotten.

Here’s a photo I found in my midnight rummaging. The accompanying text is from Global Mom, where I bring you here, the Pont des Arts, abridge over the Seine where the music of life is pulsing over the Cit of Light. These are the last lines before the lights go out and his pulse stops under a bridge in an irrigation canal in rural Idaho.

It was the night of the Fête de la Musique. Throughout that June night, Paris vibrates with its annual city- wide festival of music, when musicians of every sort—madrigal choirs, rap artists, reggae bands, orchestras, flamenco guitarists, string chamber ensembles—are free to make their music any place they want in the streets or in concert venues and for as long as they can hold out. As the name Fête de la Musique says, it’s a music party; but fête is pronounced just like faites, the imperative form of to do, making of the title a typically French jeu des mots or play on words: “Do music!”

Nothing could have suited our firstborn better. Parker, who as I’ve written was part of a circle of local percussionists, met with them on the Pont des Arts for many hours of pure drumming explosion.

Walking toward that bridge, you could feel the electricity thrumming in surging beats already in the ground and through the air. Crowds had already packed the bridge, so the children couldn’t see over all the heads, and Randall and I couldn’t see around all the bodies to find Parker. But we knew he was there somewhere. Maybe listening. Maybe hanging out with friends one last time.

As we moved closer, Dalton and Luc, who could see under people’s arms and between their knees, spotted their big brother. “Hey, Parker!” Luc yelled. But the drum beating was so thick, you couldn’t hear your own voice as it left your own mouth, let alone hear the voice of a waify seven-year-old.

Luc pulled me by my hand toward the crowd, then motioned to Randall to hoist him on his shoulders. “The crowd!” I yelled over the din, “there must be hundreds!” At least four or five hundred people on that one bridge alone, and they split apart just enough so we could edge our way toward the source. And there he sat, djembe between his knees, the white boy with blue-gray eyes, his hair cropped very short to his well-shaped skull, the American boy (but who would have ever known?) named “Par Coeur” by the likes of Shafik, his closest Tunisian drumming buddy, and five others all of African descent. There they all were, swaying and pulsing to the pounding of their own djembes and large tub drums, or rocking, eyes closed, as they pummeled their instruments together.

The energy could just about lift you off your feet. It made the bridge tremble and sway. And standing there in the push of all these people, I sensed I had to hold myself together, had to keep myself from throwing my arms in the air and spinning for sheer delirium. This was a Paris I understood, a place where millions of people sing their songs and beat their rhythms but do it all at once. Somehow, it’s not cacophonic but something beyond it, a grand intimacy and intimate grandiosity strung along the river and its several bridges.

Over those bridges, under those bridges, behind the museums, in front of the Metro stops. Children, old people, all colors, all persuasions, tourists, policemen, the homeless, the political elite. Everyone on one night crowding the skies with their music. In the center of this—really in the physical center—sat my boy, the one who’d banged into pieces my big Tupperware bowls on linoleum in New Jersey and broken to splinters my mixing spoons on the wooden kitchen floor in Norway. Who’d gotten his first drum set from a retiring musician down the street on our island and had beaten the sticks to a pulp. Who every Thursday late afternoon and in the fifteenth arrondissement of this city, had shown up for his drum lessons from a French percussionist with a long gray beard tied neatly with a red macramé bow. There was this son, shoulder to shoulder with the world, whamming and jamming with his people—all people, everyone and anyone who would stamp and clap and catch the hem of his rhythm.

“Dad?” I heard Dalton trying to raise his voice to get Randall’s attention through the noise. “Dad?” our blonde and reticent eleven-year-old was standing, a bit self-conscious, awed, visibly, by his brother. Not as comfortable yet in his skin as this muscular drummer was, but every bit as thoughtful as your average fifty-year-old.

“Yes, Dalton?” Randall crouched down to hear better.

“Dad,” Dalton was watching the movement ripple through crowd encircling the place where the seven drummers sat, feeling the surge of the drums’ cadence. “Dad, do you think . . . heaven’s anything like this?”

Randall and I laughed a bit then smiled. But Dalton was sober, stone cold serious.

I’ve held those words as if in plaster in my mind. And I have had to wonder.

You remember? I was sitting on this same chair, tapping on this same laptop, pushed up to this same desk. Around me worked a team of moving men, preparing to ship our life (and file upon file of a yet-to-be-written but contracted book, Global Mom: A Memoir) off to a new life in Switzerland.

At the same time and as part of that pre-publication ramp-up, I was advised to launch this blog right away because the whole conceit of Global Mom was based on moving, moving internationally, moving internationally often and at times unexpectedly, and doing all that while raising a family of global citizens. On this blog, I was to take you with me, real-time. Show you some of the guts of global momming. Strap you to my forehead the way sky divers strap on Go-Pros and shu-weeeeeeee! Take you for a swift transglobal spin. Prepare you for that thud-and-roll landing.

What you didn’t see, I’m afraid, was the scary stuff, all the gum-flapping and limb-flopping that was going on behind the camera. As you who’ve done any of the following know, 1) raising a family takes one’s absolutely full concentration, 2) moving that family to a new country demands even more of one’s absolutely full concentration 3) helping your family adjust and integrate once in a new country requires that much more concentration, and 4) writing and promoting a book in the midst of all that…Well, just cue non-stop gum-flap, limb-flop.

That lasted a year. I released Global Mom a year after leaving Singapore, and just when I felt maybe things were getting steady enough for my children here on the idyllic Swiss front, I signed a contract to write and publish my second book, On Loss and Living Onward.

Just as that book went to press last spring, we announced we’d be moving again. Unlike the previous move triggered by a restructuring of international headquarters, this relocation was wholly our initiative, one we’d been deliberating for some time. We knew we needed to remove our youngest from a school environment that was unhealthy for him and causing our family much heartache (to frame it in the very gentlest terms.) Gum-flapping and limb-flopping don’t come anywhere close.

June 30, 2014, Switzerland

There’s a moving team milling through my house as I type. Same chair, same laptop, same desk. This week alone, I’ve seen my piano, refrigerator and Norwegian farm table go out the carmine red door of my soft yellow Swiss village home with is green shutters, its plump tufts of lavender, and tumbling velvet geraniums. Such a pretty, idyllic picture. Yet there’s sorrow and fatigue creasing the corners of my eyes. Two deep breaths, and I fill my lungs with optimism and gratitude. I work alongside men –– one French, one Swiss, one Kosovoan––packing our lives in cardboard, padding my concerns in bubble wrap, and heading things in a big metal box with wheels northward. To Frankfurt.

View out of my office window

My husband has long since preceded us to Germany, where he’s been living weeks-over in a sterile hotel room as he starts up a new job. One moment, I’m talking with a Jean-Michel about shutting down our Swiss/French phone lines; the next, I’m talking with a Johann or a Manfred about opening a German bank account. Our Claire is at my side, mothering her brothers and helping me negotiate the 17th move of my married life. Luc is choosing classes online for what will be a German international school. Dalton, now 18, is practicing his cockney accent and reworking his Singaporean Mandarin for when he heads in August to South London for a two-year mission for our church.

You remember? You’re right. We’ve been here before.

Dalton

June 30, 2007, Paris

A moving team is arguing about how to get our massive Norwegian table out of our Paris apartment. I’m refereeing. Randall’s been living in Germany for several months already, starting his new job while we finish the school year and an eight-year French epoch. Dalton and Luc, 11 and 7, are finishing their French elementary school and once in a while I drop a German phrase or two into our talks, just to prep them for the next phase in our lives. Claire, almost 16, is inseparable from our 18-year-old Parker, who’s just graduated from ASP (the American School of Paris) and is heading tomorrow for a summer of leadership courses at college in the States. He’ll use the next months to complete the applications to serve a two-year mission for our church. Come winter.

Parker

Sorrow, fatigue. Deep breaths. Optimism, gratitude. Days are spent shutting down French phone lines and opening up German bank accounts. My daily discipline of writing so-and-so many pages? I set it aside, knowing I only have a few weeks left with all of us together. How we are. The all of us. Like this. Sure, I’ll see Parker over the summer. We’ve made those plans. And he’ll come to us in Germany over Christmas to stay for a few weeks before launching out as a missionary. But still. I only want to be with him. The sails of life are stretched taut with stress, but also with gusts of hope, and we’re cruising on momentum, headlong into the cresting, broad, blue seas.

June 21, 2014, Paris

“We’re pleased to welcome the family of Parker Bradford to today’s ceremony. We’ve invited their son Dalton to the stage.”

A dark blonde, blue-eyed kid wearing a white shirt, navy suit and his big brother’s tie strides up to the school administrator at the mic. It’s the same gentleman, a Mr. H., who’d handed Parker his diploma seven years earlier. Now, he hands Dalton a heavy plaque with his brother’s name engraved in brass and in ornate letters.

The kid blushes. His face is neither smiling nor frowning, but hangs between emotions. Or above them. He shifts from foot to foot. The sibling resemblance is eerie.

“Dalton, like all of you here,” says Mr. H., “has just graduated from high school, only in Geneva. He’ll be presenting the Parker Bradford Spirit Award to this year’s graduating senior who best embodies the qualities of tolerance, enthusiasm and buoyancy that typified Parker, Dalton’s older brother. Parker was a student here at ASP for eight years. One month after graduating in June of 2007––just like you’re graduating today––Parker lost his life while trying to save a college classmate from drowning.”

The blonde brother stares out over an audience of quiet faculty and families. I’m in the back-most row in a corner, yet can hear––can nearly feel––his heart beating. I tuck my chin to my chest.

I’m struck in that moment by the flaccidity of words, how they fool only those who trust words to convey the true proportion of certain truths, realities simply too vast for language. I’m sobered by how vulnerable that whole auditorium full of families is, but how they do not know it. How luminous the boy Justin is to whom the Parker Bradford Spirit Award is given. How magnanimous the school has been to our family, how empathetic. How utterly vital a healthy school community is for families, especially those in transition. How we could have used that these last two years.

Above all, I’m struck by how quickly it’s over––the presentation of the award itself, the graduation, the passage, this life.

How I have been here before. How everything is different.

How, because everything is different, I vow to do things differently this time.

How, for this passage, I’ll truly be there for my family.

Which means that for a little while at least –– for however long it takes –– I won’t be here.

On the Pont des Arts, Paris, before the bridge became weighted with the love locks that distinguish it today.

This is post #199. In a couple of days, I’ll give you my final and 200th post. Between now and then, I invite you to order and read this book. 🙂

On Loss & Living Onward came to be over months of unprecedented searching and researching. By “searching,” I mean grieving, which, after the initial implosion of traumatic loss, is intense, prolonged yearning.

Yes, I was searching. Not for release from grief or its pain, but specifically for Parker, for God, for community, for truth, for understanding, for strength, for light. Sometimes, for air.

And I was researching. From the introduction to On Loss:

“…Every morning when the children left for school and Randall left for the office or for the airport, I turned to my daily pattern of digging and searching amid piles of books spread about me in a circular mountain range. I sat cross-legged on the floor with sometimes twenty books open at once: Testaments, both Old and New and other scriptures of my faith; a poetry anthology; a modern French novel; a German lyric; a prophet’s or pioneer’s personal journal; a Norwegian memoir; a commentary on the book of Job; a stack of professional journals on parental grief; collected talks from great spiritual leaders past and present and from the East to the West; discourses from Plutarch and Plato; my Riverside Shakespeare; accounts of Holocaust survivors, 9/11 survivors, tsunami survivors; and Parker’s own words, which we have treasured in his journals, poetry, school essays, letters, and lyrics.

Oh. And my laptop.

For hours to months on end, I went spelunking through others’ words. When someone’s words hit the bedrock of the Spirit, I knew it in half a breath. There were revelatory moments when a correct insight stunned me to immediate tears or, more often, head-to-toe stillness. At times my heart would leap a hurdle or my eyes would stretch wide open; other times I would hold my breath or exhale audibly in gratitude. Whatever my physical and intellectual response, every time a writer got it, I’d quickly type those words into my files.

Unswerving, I kept at it—mining, sifting, cataloging; grieving, mourning, learning, writing; adapting. While I never found the one book that for me addressed the desperate underside of grief as well as the magnificent promise of the loving bond that endures and evolves despite physical separation, I was (to my surprise) on my way to writing one.

And today—almost seven years after Parker was taken in an early harvest that plowed our souls right open—I finished this book. I lovingly pass it on to you.”

In one month my second book, On Loss and Living Onward: Collected Voices, will be in your hands. As I write these words, talented lay-out and cover designers David and Maggie are making last-second tweaks, and sending the manuscript off to press.

Let me admit something: This book has been pushing itself up and out of my very pores for nearly five years. It’s been close to publication with two other publishing houses. And I’ve been teetering on that slick ledge of giving up on it, oh, 174 times. But I have a persistent (bossy and endearing) cheering committee, and they wouldn’t let me hunker down in the safe retreat of silence. Finally, this book has found its rightful channel to reach the public.

I am grateful. I am joyful. I am tired. I am anxious.

Anxious and exhausted smile. . .

When cataclysm erupted in our family’s life, I turned to literature for a community, common experience and spiritual knowledge. People who know me well know that, with the exception of math, marbled meats and sometimes sleep, I don’t do much half-heartedly. So that same intensity translated into gathering hundreds upon hundreds of statements on loss and grief. Not with a mind to ever publish an anthology, mind you, but with a heart that was stunned to a sputtering speechlessness and needed understanding. I scraped and spelunked through other’s words to speak for and to me. In time, and without having had a plan on the outset to do so, I had the makings of a major tome on grief. Those quotes–at least those for which my publisher could acquire legal permissions– together with 17 of my best personal essays, have evolved into this substantial book. I can hardly wait to get it out there.

I sent a friend and fellow bereaved mother a galley (pre-published) PDF copy. Here’s what she wrote to me just this week:

Dear Melissa,
I’ve had the immense pleasure of spending much of this past weekend with your wonderful book…My husband was not feeling well, so we were both at home, and I read and read. I can’t tell you how often I picked up my computer and said to my husband, “Read this,” because you were able to articulate just how I was feeling so much of the time. And you did it so eloquently and beautifully. You were able to put into words what I felt but could not express and you did this so much better than any other author I have read.
I loved the quotes at the beginning of each section. I must admit though that I hurried through them so that I could get to your writing. I do plan to go back and highlight as soon as I get my hard copy. There were so many wonderful nuggets where I paused and smiled because they nailed feelings I had experienced and interpreted what I was still trying to identify.
One of my favorites was the grief beast section. My grief beast looks a lot like yours, and now I can put a name and description to it. It’s still lumbering around but it doesn’t come as often as it did before and it doesn’t stay as long. But I think that now I will talk about that beast to others so they can have a better idea about how awful grief can be.
I can’t imagine how heart wrenching it must have been for you to move to an entirely new country and new community right after Parker’s death. How did you survive? I’m so glad that you wrote. It must have been healing for you, but now it is healing for so many others. Even though you were so alone, you have been able through your writings to reach out to so many.
I’m so grateful that you have such a gift for writing. All of us who have experienced the loss of a child feel like your book is balm for our grief. I shed a ton of tears as I read, but I felt so understood and valued. I will read it again and again. Thank you. Thank you.

You know those emails that make your throat sting and nose prickle like you’d just breathed in a whole room full of dry ice fumes? This one. If she says it works, I’m convinced. I need that kind of reassurance. Similar to my fears of publishing Global Mom, I have had some nagging fears for this book, too. What if I turn my son into an artifact? Will I be misunderstood as bitter, gloomy, morbid, or strangely proud of or elitist about our family’s loss? Will my family’s story not be fairly represented? Will I make grief look too easy? Too hard? Too dreamy? Too predictable? Too comprehensible? Too tidy? Will its most helpful pages not be the ones that were the hardest to write, which were the descriptive ones (my essays), but the most helpful will be the prescriptive ones, which took just a day to whip together (the two appendices with What To Do/ What Not To Do and a suggested readings list)? Will my deep faith and profound, repeated experiences with the spiritual alienate readers who do not, perhaps, consider themselves people of faith, or “spiritual” types? WiIl this book speak with humility the truth I’ve known?

I’ve run down this list of questions plus a longer one, be assured. But I’ll let you read my writings, and you can decide.

Visit my Loss and Living Onward Facebook Page to find daily updates as well as quotes I could not include in the hard copy itself.

You can preorder now on Amazon, or wait until May 6th to order and receive your stack for yourself and for

Two months of blankness here at Melissa Writes of Passage. Two months of blessedness in my off-line life.

Because it’s been so much, you’ll excuse me this one time if I’m dry and unimaginative. I dislike “dry and unimaginative” in writing as much as I do in eating. Who wants a 2″ cracker that sits on your tongue like an old cardboard bus ticket when you could have a deep ceramic dish of eggplant parmesan and a generous serving of tiramisu? I mean, honestly.

But I can’t go for juicy, well-spiced and elaborate today. Unless I write another book. I’m doing catch-up here. So I hope you’ll pardon the cracker:

Jan 5 –Feb 5:

Crunch month. Many 16-hour days devoted to prepping for book tour.

Jan 5-Feb 5:

Crunch month also for final submissions of manuscript for my next book, Loss & Living Onward, releasing in May. (But you can already go ahead and preorder here.)

Book Tour: New England and the Rockies

The Global Mom New England/Rockies book tour grew from what originally was to have been 3 events to 21, spread over 12 days. There was one day with 6 back-to-back events. A lot. But it was invigorating and, on the deepest levels, nourishing for me. So, with the huge support of many large-hearted folks, I managed it. I’ll give more details of individual experiences as I get back into posting here every week. Much to share.

Feb 6-12. Massachusetts and Utah: I saw and spoke about things that really matter, and with dozens ––even hundreds–– of people, most of whom I was meeting for the first time, some of whom have been lifelong friends, and even a couple of key people with whom I’ve been virtually incommunicado for several years. The power of human connection and, above all, reconciliation was at times enough to make my spine melt. I found my self welling with tears many times over the 12 days. I never cried from exhaustion or stress (even when my computer battery died in the middle of a presentation, or when I lost my voice from one minute to the next); I grew teary from joy, gratitude, and from the tenderness I felt many times as I communed with new and old friends. There seemed to be a palpable outpouring of goodness every place I was able to go. It was uplifting and fortifying for me.

With Maja, cherished lifelong friend

Multiple times, I lectured on Global Mom and the nature of internationally nomadic living. But I also focused many of my engagements on addressing head-on the landscape of loss. This naturally dove-tailed Global Mom with a lecture on Loss & Living Onward. At one fireside in particular, arranged by Sharlee (a lifelong friend you’ll learn more about in future posts) the atmosphere was palpably resonant. I’m indebted to the many professionals and friends who facilitated gatherings like that.

Women of the Marriott Business School (Jacque second to right)

I was fortunate to speak twice to groups at Harvard Business School (one time of the two was in tandem with my lifelong friend Jacque, who is a corporate business partner; you’ll also learn more about her in future posts), three times at Brigham Young University, including one keynote address with Jacque at the Marriott Business School. There were formal book signings and readings, six firesides, a Mormon Women Project event, four book groups, a grief roundtable, a fun radio interview (will post that link soon) , a quick morning TV spot, and filming of the trailer for my upcoming book with Michelle (you’ll learn more about her and our friendship, too, here and in future posts), and many valuable side conversations with audience members and readers. Every single day––every hour, it seemed–– was weighted with meaning.

With Michelle and her daughter, Mary

Request

If by chance you attended any of these events either at Harvard, in Cambridge, in western Massachusetts, in Salt Lake City, at BYU or any other venue, maybe you can leave a brief comment here about what you attended and experienced. It’s nice to see these things from others’ points of view. I won’t be able to do the entire tour justice unless I have participants’ input.

Home Again

I landed­ at the Geneva airport on Monday, February 17th—exhausted, (sort of), but primarily exhilarated, bone-deep grateful, and soaked-through with memories of people’s kindness­. I felt I could have turned around and done the whole thing all over again. Except for the fact that. . .

Meeting our daughter at the Geneva airport. Her eyes tell volumes. It is bewildering and sometimes painful to leave the rich mission experience and reenter mundane life.

…only 24 hours later, on Tuesday, February 18th, through those same sliding airport doors walked our daughter Claire, finally home with us after 18 months as a volunteer for our church in southern Italy. We have not see her face-to-face this whole time. (We’ve only exchanged weekly emails and Skyped three times, one hour a shot.) My next post will focus exclusively on her experience.

Christmas dismantled. On March 3rd.

Fulfilling a promise we’d made to Claire many months ago, we celebrated Christmas Eve (The Sequel) on the 19th, and Christmas Day (The Sequel) on the 20th, on what would have been our Parker’s 25th birthday. It is difficult to share what these landmarks mean to me, to us, to our ongoing sense of family. There has been a lot of smiling, crying, silence, laughter and embracing. And while it’s been thrilling to all be together, it’s also been sobering to not all be together.

Claire and little brother Dalton

Claire and baby brother Luc

The day after the Christmas Day Sequel (and fulfilling another promise we’d made earlier to Claire), we drove off for northern Italy, to Milan, with our Claire as translator, where we stumbled into Women Fashion Week, but quickly escaped in order to spend Sunday with the Di Caros, friends our Claire made during her missionary service. This visit (and the seven-course dinner served in their charming farm home surrounded by vineyards and beehives) deserves its own post, also coming. (With some great photos).

This week, I’ll be in the capital of the Czech Republic as a presenter at the global Women’s International Network conference. The W.I.N. conference is an annual happening that draws in both women and men from around the world, and from among global business and opinion leaders, entrepreneurs, executives, academics, NGO representatives, artists, and yes, a couple of us writers. Over several days, we’ll participate in plenary sessions, workshops, forums, dinners and networking activities. For this, I’m packing, among other necessities, yoga stretchies, a great-fitting suit, dental floss, my scriptures, and a ball gown. To give you an idea.

travel nytimes

I’ll first be presenting an extended workshop entitled, “Making a Home in the World: The Whats and Whys of Raising a Global Family.” I’m all ready to roll this one out, an audio-visual, bells-and-whistles journey through our life, packed with years of my personal research into the various angles of expatriate living. How many of “us” expatriates are there in the world? What is the average failure rate of expatriate assignments? What are the primary reasons for that failure? What can expatriates themselves and sponsors of expatriate relocations do to avoid such failure? And then I’ve rehearsed a tap-dancing interlude, if things go really well. (Or if they don’t. Either way, I might have to dredge up my inner Ginger.)

That, friends, promises to be the high energy, speedy, dynamic and entertaining part of this week for me.

wikicommons

Then there’s another moment. For it, I’ll have neither Power Point nor body mic. Not a single bell. Nowhere a whistle. No tap shoes. I’ll be part of a forum panel, which will address issues of feminine resiliency. My contribution is entitled, “When Crisis Hits: Tragic Loss, Resilience, Living Onward With Grace.” As you intuit, this is where I’ll share our family’s story from the point of view of the mother. Whereas in the first workshop I recount how and where we’ve come this far geographically, in the second I’ll describe how and where we’ve come spiritually. Scriptless and ready to field questions, I’ll get to share with complete strangers what drills directly into the marrow of my soul’s bone.

travel nat’l geo

When I arrive tomorrow in Prague, and find myself alone in my hotel room, I’ll lay out my yoga pants and glam gown on my bed, then dump out my cosmetics from their Ziploc bags onto the small bathroom counter. I’ll then turn on my chosen inspirational music on my phone. (Coldplay, Ella, and the MoTab are set to drown out my droning self-doubt.) Then I’ll roll my impossibly heavy carry-on to a corner, the one bursting with 50+ copies of this book I’ve written, the book that will be sold at the conference bookstore, the one that, like my newly-minted business cards, has my face on its every surface.

It could make one feel important. For about nine seconds.

Finally, I’ll take out four enlarged and framed pictures. I’ll find a place in this hotel room to line them up for company and for comfort. One picture, a girlfriend in Singapore made. It is a posthumous family portrait (how else to put it?) with all of us smiling in 2010, and she photo-shopped in our oldest, Parker, absent to the eye since 2007. There he is, though – right there! – smiling more broadly than any one of us.

Next to that picture, I’ll place three more shots just of Parker. There’s the shot of him leaning against a lamp post in Montmartre. And then the shot taken right before he rode that sling shot contraption in the Tuileries. And in the third picture, he’s drumming his djembe in front of the Eiffel Tower, his favorite place to hang out. He’s drumming that djembe with abandon, and with a beaded head band a little Moroccan girl had just gifted him. “I put it on to make her laugh,” he told me when I saw that picture in June. “And she did! Man, she was so sweet.” A month later, he died.

Here’s part of what I’ll be thinking, maybe, as I unpack in Prague. That over 25 years ago I dreamt of a moment like this : I would write a book. Pages, a front and back cover. And I would arrive at some international conference to talk about that book. In an auditorium. Where there would be (in my dream) many languages. A microphone. Beads of sweat. I’d be pretending (as everyone with a book, an auditorium, a mic and sweat must pretend) to be confident.

Certain realities , it turns out, can be more powerful than certain dreams. The me of 25 years ago would never have believed it. Yet the me of today is living it. The Reality that we chose and that has driven us became this: a loving (and imperfect) marriage and four splendid (and human) children with whom we’ve pursued a life that skipped, groveled and hiccupped across many geographies. Reality, for me, meant I needed to be with these children in an intense manner to hold stuff together. There was simply no bandwidth in that Reality (and less and less personal ambition, over time) for pursuing certain Dreams. And of course there was the Reality of death.

While we’ve crawled through death, it seems the Dreams have hung there, waiting for another Reality to catch up with them.

czech transport

Tell me, though. Are these photos in a hotel room – these precious children, this flawed but thriving family, that smiling spirit son, this carry-on of published words – are they not Reality? To what do I ascribe the convergence of a misty Dream and a rock hard Reality? The luggage-tagged and framed-smiling evidence of something I have lived? On this autumn day? In Prague?

Is the human heart even engineered to handle so much gratitude and so much pain – such Dreams and such Realities – and keep on beating? And strongly enough to speak about it all?

The following is an excerpt from the recently published interview with Neylan McBaine of Mormon Women’s Project. To view the full interview in its original, and to read other intriguing interviews with women of my faith from around the world, gohere.

MWP: Would you please describe the trajectory of the story that you’ve written in your recently published memoir?

MDB: The book begins when we had been married for seven years, Randall and I, and we were living in the New York City area. It was my husband’s first job and at that point we had two little children, Parker and Claire. I had been, as I describe in the book, busy following a few different career trajectories: I was a full time mother; I was teaching writing part time at a local college; and I was launching a career as a musical theater actress. And it was right in the middle of a musical that I was in that my husband received an offer pretty much out of the blue for us to move to Scandinavia for two or three years. As it turned out, that move ended up lasting a couple of decades. . .

We were in Norway for just under five years, time to have our third child, Dalton, and then we moved to Versailles, a medium-sized city which lies just fifteen minutes outside of Paris. We were there for four years, just enough time to have our fourth child, Luc. . .We moved to the heart of Paris, two blocks from the Eiffel Tower. We enrolled our two youngest, Dalton and Luc, in French schools. Our two oldest attended an international school, and we were there for a little over four years.

We lived in Munich for three years, and then went to Singapore, where we were supposed to stay for many years, if not until the end of Randall’s career. But there was a sudden restructuring and the entire international component of the multinational company he was working for was dispersed and his position was moved to Geneva. That’s where we live now. .

MWP: Tell me a little bit about the honest costs to you personally and to your family.

MDB: I will tell you what a couple of them are. The core costs are related to community. I don’t have a continuous, long-standing community with me, and I have not had that kind of permanent, reliable, known support ever while raising my family. When your life is going peachy and there are no speed bumps whatsoever–then you might not feel you need a strong community. You can breaststroke all by yourself. But when you are paddling upstream against currents like new cultures, new languages, new ways of doing everything, parenting while your partner is half a world away and for over half the month, and when there are whirlpools . . . Oh, I didn’t think I would come to that metaphor, but I tend to always come back to water and drowning metaphors. . .

For more of this extended interview about global living, traumatic loss, the journey with grief, and how to help someone who is hurting deeply, please clickHERE.

Unless you count last week when I spent several nights in a tent in the Swiss mountains, trying to sleep for two-hours-at-a-stretch maximum, while surrounded by 40 teenaged girls.

Who can not fall in love with girls with names like Céléstine, Clémence, Cléophelie, Angéline, Amandine, Antonella, and Aude?

As volunteer president of the teenaged girls’ organization of our church in and around the Geneva, Switzerland region, I’m regularly visiting the eight congregations that make up our regional church body, teaching lessons on Sundays or sometimes midweek, speaking at youth conferences, inviting special guest speakers for multiregional firesides and conducting those events, and getting to know local leaders and all their young women.

Romainmôtier and its abbey dating to the 5th century.

I also got to attend the annual 3 1/2 day regional Young Women’s Camp held at a site overlooking the medieval village of Romainmôtier with its historic Benedictine Abbey and splendid hiking trails all around.

As fate would have it, Le Camp des Jeunes Filles happened to be scheduled just as I was nostril-deep in Pre-Book Launch mania.

Eh. . . bien. Tant mieux, (all the better), we say.

Because for me, it’s vital right now to get out of cramped little head upholstered with All Things Book and enter fully into nature and into the heart of others’ lives. It gave me much, this camp, including dearly-needed fresh perspective. And 17 mosquito bites. On my shins alone.

From Wednesday until late Saturday afternoon, I was able/forced to unplug completely from this laptop and all other devices and concerns about this woman named Global Mom. I spent the days truly getting to know all these girls and their local leaders (from Switzerland, France, Italy, Spain, England).

I awoke to the sound of cowbells (and Harley Davidsons) on the slopes surrounding our camp site. I fell asleep (in a loose manner of speaking) to the giggles and screams of all our girls in the adjacent tents. I made the rounds in the middle of the night, making sure every tent was zip-locked and everyone was accounted for. I watched for critters.

I sang songs. I gave addresses. I listened to girls’ questions and concerns. I ate well, laughed hard, hiked for hours, read scripture, slept in a bag.

I chatted with Sœur Madeleine, one of the local nuns. I observed growth. I learned critical truths. I grew in gratitude.

I cleaned toilets, table tops, garbage cans and wounds. I set up and took down (how many?) tents. I got every name.

I did not shower.

I did not write.

And on Saturday, after every last girl and flip-flop and hair band and pocket knife and tent spike was accounted for. . .

I drove home to my village by Lake Geneva. I kissed my husband, checked my email and accumulating deadlines, packed my bag, showered (yes, in that order), slept five hours, and boarded a plane.

(No, I did not sleep then, either, unless letting my eyes close and my head bob a few times during my flight from Geneva to Paris to Salt Lake City, Utah counts. I wrote until my laptop battery was drained dry and the recharging apparatus didn’t work. But I stayed awake.)

Hours later — luggage lost, toe sprained, hair still smelling of Swiss campfire, every last mosquito bite well-covered — I was sitting in a TV studio in Salt Lake City, Utah, doing a live morning talk show. Before cameras rolled, I reached down to scratch a mosquito bite, and in that instant felt so grateful for all 17 of them, for my 40 girls back home in Switzerland, for my 2 boys with me in Utah, my 1 daughter far away in Italy, and for my eldest, who has been with me all along this crazy trail, trying to be a Global Mom.

With my new Facebook Page devoted exclusively to Global Mom: A Memoir, (release date: July 15th), I’m happy to be able to declare this website the space dedicated to things. . .

Global Mom: A Melissa.

Global Mom writes. . . of passage

Curious about the release of the book? Then go here, to Global Mom on Facebook, where this coming week I’m starting a vlog visit series with a string of other global moms. They have vastly contrasting stories, have lived in all corners of the planet, and have survived to tell you about it.

lunchin’ bunch o’ global moms

I’m also keeping you updated there on the ins and outs of recording the audio version of the book. Go to that address to be updated on all other booky stuff. Love your visits and appreciate your comments!

Then come here (like. . . truly, literally here-here, no hyperlink needed) for conversations with me about, yes, writing and being a global mom, but beyond that, what touches me as a person in this writing/living/nomadding lifetsyle. . .and everything else.

And there’s a bit of “else.”

Events, ideas, struggles, disappointments, mini-triumphs, local travel and on-the-ground responsibilities – all aspects of my behind-the-book personal life. This is the gamut of writing I’ve not adequately shared with you while I’ve been posting excerpts of the book or otherwise introducing you to the crew (publisher, editors, PR people) teaming up for Global Mom’s release.

What is “everything else”? Things related to:

1) Integrating in French-speaking Switzerland (Want to see why Switzerland is so clean? I’ll show you live footage of the guts of its garbage disposal system.)

summer over Lac Léman

Canton de Vaud, countryside

2) Negotiating yet another new school system (Who wants a seasoned insider’s peek at international schools? And do you want a quick-‘n’-dirty on the famed International Baccalaureate degree? What’s it like to educate your kids multilingually?)

German, French, Italian, English. But hold on – where’s the Romansch?

3) Raising teenaged boys on the global road (Make that a bumpy global road lately. . .I’ve been seriously wondering what in the world we were thinking signing up for this, and what we’ve done to our children.)

Luc takes up snowboarding

4) Having our daughter serve as a full-time missionary in Italy (From run-ins with the local Mafia in Sicily, to gypsies stoning her in Rome. Santa patata and honest to Pete.)

7) Visitors from abroad. If you follow me on Twitter (MDBGlobalMom), you know I just had some favorite relatives here. And soon I’ll host a whole gang of favorite friends. (One ultra-talented visitor will be here shooting the trailer for my book.)

8) My volunteer service overseeing a delightful group of the local leaders and adolescent girls of our church, all through the Geneva region and into parts of France. (Google-map it: from Chambéry, France, to Morges, Switzerland).

9) The signed contract to write a book with Randall on Strengthening Long Distance Marriages. (Coming in 2014)

10) And finally – and most sweetly – the signed contract to bring you my substantial book on Grief & Grace.(Watch for it: Memorial Day 2014)